[resolved] Properties palette GUI issues 1.4.0 rc5

[dramatic]

Hi,
I'm producing my first document (a pdf web newsletter) in scribus, and have struck usability problems with the properties palette, primarily the inability to resize it.
The worst case so far is the gradient options in the colours tab - a horizontal scrollbar takes up 95% of the height of the colour selector, making it impossible to choose any colour other than the first.

It would appear to be a sensible solution for the palette to be resizable and for any areas within to stretch with the resize.

Scribus 1.4.0rc5
Vista Home Premium 32-bit /Aero running on Athlon 64 dual core with Nvidia graphics (2 monitors@ 1280x960)

[a.l.e]

... the palette *is* resizeable :-)

just go to the lower right corner and drag it.

the question is, whether some new parts of the palette are too wide or depending on the platform the current defaults are indeed the optimal width and on other platforms it's too tight...

and if the height can't be increased because otherwise the palette would go out of the monitor for some users...

but i agree: the default size should indeed be big enough for most systems!

i've posted it as a bug report:
http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=10315

[dramatic]

I did make multiple attempts to resize the frame, honest!
The target area for resizing seems to be narrower than the frame, and the cursor never changes to resizehandles until after you've started dragging.

I agree that caution is needed with the initial height - frames and dialogs which are too large from the screen are a major headache. I don't know if I'd ever use scribus on my Asus eee - its 600px screen height would be a real challenge.

Some possibilities:
* can the program access the system's window height and work relative to that?
* re-style the accordion tabs to have less padding and/or no gutter (just a thin border rather than a button effect)
* do all systems have narrow scroll bars available?
* add more default width - having to add a vertical scrollbar to the open panel seems to trigger the need for a horizontal scrolling
(I do always try to offer solutions, not just complaints :-)

[a.l.e]

hi dramatic...

1.4 should be very close to be released and i don't think that it's the right time to solve this issue if it implies more than a very simple fix.

from jean's comment in the  bug tracker i would say that we will have to live it as is for now... except if somebody provides a simple patch which fixes this...

for 1.6 the properties palette is being fully rewritten... i think that we will have to get it right there, then!
(there won't be no accordion any more!)